|
|
|
Leaders, Celebrities Oppose War BY
JUNG HEE CHOI
Many world leaders, experts, public officials and influential public figures are opposing the Bush administration’s plan to wage war on Iraq. Some of the harshest comments are from one of the most respected world leaders, former South African president Nelson Mandela. In a Newsweek interview, he described the U.S. attitude toward other countries and its past support of oppressive regimes in Afghanistan and Iran as a “threat to world peace,” and the push to attack Iraq as a desire to “bully the world.” “What America is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the [U.N.] Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries,” Mandela said. “There is no doubt that the United States now feels that they are the only superpower in the world and they can do what they like.” The administration has not substantiated the claim that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, said former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter during a CNN interview. “As of December 1998, [U.N. inspectors] had accounted for 90 to 95 percent of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability,” Ritter said. “I believe Washington, D.C., is using the concept of inspection as a political foil to justify war. The best way to stop war is to get the inspectors back in.” Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, has led a small band of Democrats to push Bush to give the U.N. process a chance. In a recent San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece, she wrote, “We have not been told why the danger [from Saddam Hussein] is greater today than it was a year or two ago or why we must rush to war rather than pursuing other options.” Former President Jimmy Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and former Vice President Al Gore have denounced current foreign policies as reflecting values of “dominance” and “unilateralism” rather than democracy. And the Rev. Jesse Jackson called for a “thoughtful, considered public debate” before launching a war and risking thousands of lives. Criticisms have extended to how Bush has carried out the “war on terrorism.” In her final days as the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson blasted the United States for violating civil rights and eroding human rights standards worldwide since Sept. 11. Prominent writers and actors have also spoken out against the administration’s war drive. Many, including Susan Sarandon, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Fonda and Oliver Stone, signed a statement of conscience against the U.S. “war on terrorism” published in the New York Times. In her latest
published work, author Alice Walker lamented the impact of sanctions against
Iraq and the moral responsibility the United States bears for the deaths
of millions of Iraqi children. In an interview with The Observer (United Kingdom), author Walter Mosley said he believes that African Americans, who have suffered years of oppression, racism and violence, are in a unique position to lead a new peace movement. “[T]he only way to make sure that [Sept. 11] does not happen again is to make sure we don’t do it to anyone else,” he said. Jung Hee Choi is a War Times editor and the communications coordinator at the Women of Color Resource Center. |
|
|
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras is a fiscally sponsored project of the |
